Strange question.

madferret(UK 8b-9a)September 28, 2011

I'm pretty sure nobody has asked this although this being the Internet you never know.

As some may know already I've got a good few seedlings going now and I believe these may or may not bear decent fruit (that remains to be seen) but obviously being from seed they'll take anything from 7-10 years and be huge trees by the end of it.

So to my question if say in 5 years I decide they're getting too big. If I then took a cutting and either rooted or grafted that would I be able to continue as if they were of 5 years or would it reset the counter so to speak.

Also would adding a different rootstock increase or decrease fruiting age?

Rooted cuttings taken from mature fruit bearing trees will often flower the first year and then may or may not bloom the following year(s). Typically from what I have read is that time to bloom is determined by the amount of leaf nodes that a tree has, or had. I say had because a rooted cutting obviously doesnt have the correct number but the parent tree did, or could have, so the cutting typically doesnt have to meet that requirement before it would bloom.

Now whether a cutting from a seedling would act the same way is beyond me but in theory I think it could.

sounds like a cool experiment to try although your results may take several years to find out.

Technically a cutting/clone from a tree is the same plant/same age, so you don't gain anything or lose anything, i.e. the cutting should produce fruit at the same time as the parent. Personally I am completely against citrus from seed... unless it is just a hobby, or you don't care about getting fruit.
Get smart... start with a good grafted tree... and learn from there

I have 2 lemons seedlings that I started about 4 years ago. I know they may not flower and fruit for years if at all but they are sentimental to me since they are the first citrus I ever had, so I keep them going. Plus I enjoy just the look of them. my grafted trees do take center stage in the garden though.

I haven't found it makes much difference to the start of flowering for a seedling. There have been a few reports that grafting may make for a slightly quicker maturity, but not all experts agree with this. There is no particular rootstock that reliably helps.
In the UK you will be growing your seedlings in pots which naturally limits the maximum size. You don't need to worry about getting 'huge trees' here!

There seems to be some misunderstanding here. If you take a cutting from the top of your plant, that cutting will "remember" its physiological age, so if the seedling is 5 years old, that cutting will act as if it were 5 years old. However, if you take a cutting from near the base of the tree, it will behave as if it were much younger. The tree is counting nodes (points of attachment of leaves and buds) from the original seed. Your goal is to get to as high a node count as possible, since it will become mature, and produce flowers, after a certain node number is reached. So yes, if you always take your cuttings from the top of a plant, you continue to add to the count.

Malcolm,
pruning a tree will often encourage branching and backbudding.
Despite the fact that a few nodes/internodes are removed from the tip of the branch,
several new branches (each contributing nodes/internodes of their own) generally appear
on the pruned branch. Do each of these nodes add to the overall 'count'?